Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to IP television (IPTV) systems, and in particular, to resell of IPTV services.
Description of Related Art
With today's widespread use of the Internet as a communication medium, packet-switched networks, such as Internet Protocol (IP), Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Ethernet networks, are increasingly being used to transmit digital multimedia data or content (e.g., audio, full-motion audio/video, pictures, etc.). An example of an architecture that uses packet-switched networks to provide real-time (live or video-on-demand) multimedia content to end users is the IP television (IPTV) architecture. Within the IPTV architecture, head end servers obtain media content, such as digital broadcast television programs, and stream the media content over a packet-switched network to one or more set top boxes (STBs) associated with television viewers who have subscribed to receive the television program via backend (middleware) and/or branch media servers.
As the IPTV deployment market saturates for the larger telecom operators, future revenue streams are going to become dependent on the remaining smaller telecom operators. These customers require a low-cost, small-footprint, entry-level solution which provides a similar service offering as the larger operators. However, the significant start-up costs associated with building a video head-end, negotiating and acquiring content licensing from national content providers and/or staffing an operations organization that can maintain a complex IPTV middleware deployment has produced a considerable barrier to entry for smaller operators.
For example, the operator must offer an attractive video package to gain customers, translating to national and premium content as well as an expansive video on demand (VoD) library. Costs for securing contracts with these providers as well as building a head-end for receiving and manipulating this content are exorbitantly high. In addition, a large server farm hosting an IPTV middleware entails an additional large implementation cost. The costs for implementing the network and access portions are then piled on, putting initial startup costs at a level unattainable by many smaller operators. Given the tenuous lending market of today's economy, such startup costs and debt are prohibitive to these operators.
In addition to the cost barrier, these smaller operators are also not staffed to the level of a larger (e.g., Tier-1) operator. In practice, it is common to see three to six engineers being tasked with end-to-end operations of an IPTV solution for even Tier-2 operators. Introducing a complex and operator-intensive middleware platform is a major undertaking for these operators. Their existing staff must be brought up-to-speed quickly and, many times, learning on a live system. Mistakes commonly result in outages of the entire environment. These operational tasks take time away from normal workflow activities of the platform and marketing-related activities which can differentiate the video offering from local competitors.
A hosted IPTV model providing a tiered resell arrangement, in which an operator with a deployed IPTV middleware would resell IPTV services to neighboring operators, thereby hosting subscribers for these neighboring operators and serving content to these subscribers, is being proposed by the inventors as a solution. The hosting operator would generate recurring subscription revenue from the neighboring operators, while the hosted operator(s) would be able to enter into the video market for a nominal start-up cost. For example, only a subset of the required server farm would need to be deployed at the hosted operator facility, thus greatly reducing the startup costs. The hosted operators would then be able to purchase media content already encoded and encrypted per an IPTV middleware specification from a hosting operator for a regular yearly fee, yet still retain the ability to customize the IPTV experience for their own customers.
However, the current IPTV middleware does not natively support a shared IPTV environment between operators. In addition, currently available IPTV middleware is built with the assumption that all content from a video head-end is available to all connected branch servers. There is currently no mechanism to filter content metadata and digital rights management (DRM) keys from the backend servers to the branch servers to provide a customized solution to hosted operators. Therefore, all operators connected to a shared backend server would have access to metadata and DRM keys for all available services, meaning a tiered resell arrangement would be enforced by handshake agreements between operators to not access metadata and/or DRM keys for content they have not purchased. Such a configuration is undesirable to not only the hosted operators and hosting operators, but also to the national content providers.